I’ve been trying to get into a community garden here in the neighborhood and am looking forward to maybe next year being my year. The garden at 61st street has been kind of in limbo due to a pending construction project at the University of Chicago. Currently the garden is on University property and they are trying to find a new home for it or try to keep it where it is. I got an email update yesterday saying that they might try to expand the number of people who can have plots by breaking it up into several different locations throughout the neighborhood.

I’m a little bummed that I didn’t get into the garden this year but we did get to plant some tomatoes and chard at my parents’ place in WI. I’m going to check on the tomatoes on Thursday. Hopefully they’re ripe!

When you don’t have you’re own outdoor space you’re at the mercy of others to some extent. Ideally I’d just dig up the front or back yard and plant a garden there but I’m not sure my neighbors would be into it. Our yards are completely wasted space. Maybe next year I can talk them into letting me carve out some gardening space, or maybe they’d be more into having some hens in the yard. Eggs for everyone!

After many months of anticipation farmer’s market season is upon us! Yay!

I have my list of markets to check out and at the top of the list is the 61st Street Farmer’s Market. It’s one of the independently run markets in the city and I’m really hoping it’s good. My goal for the summer is to get as much food as I can from the farmer’s markets hopefully it’s as easy as I think it should be.

Here’s some more info on the market. The 61st Street Farmer’s Market open May 16th and will be happening every Saturday thru October 31st 9am-2pm. They have a lot of special guest speakers, cooking demonstrations and a variety of other events going on throughout the year so check out their website or become a fan on Facebook.

If you live in Chicago and are looking for a market near you, check out the Explore Chicago website.

If you live anywhere else Local Harvest has listings for most of the rest of the country.

Way too long. Well the past month has been exciting. I went to Oregon. It was fantastic. Drank a lot of wine, sat by the ocean, ate amazing seafood and most importantly relaxed.

Came back home and have been working my ass off. It’s good though, I like being busy. I just kind of wish I had a little tiny bit more time to enjoy the weather, but all in all I can’t complain.

Another big thing I’ve been diving into over the past month is altering my diet a bit. It all kind of started with the whole grocery experiment in April. Slowly since then I’ve been really reading labels, trying to buy more local produce, working on supporting local businesses instead of just going online and buying from bigger superstore types of places.

Last year I did my big olive curing project. I bought those olives from a farm in California. They had kind of a bummer year this year and have posted on their website that they only have about 15% of what they had last year. They lost a lot of fruit to a late freeze. Boo! I’ve been looking forward to this since last year. So I started looking around and found an Italian grocery here in Chicago that carries uncured olives. They have a couple different varieties which is great and we don’t have to buy 10 pounds. We’re going to go out there this weekend and get a couple pounds. We’re going to try out oil curing. Not my favorite but the hubby likes them. I’m excited about that. It’ll be a little easier to experiment with some different flavors and methods on a smaller scale.

The other thing I’m kind of jazzed up about today is finding out that the Wood Street Urban Farm has a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Why am I just learning about this now?

If you’re not familiar with CSA’s it’s a program where you pay a fee for a season or a set time period and you receive fresh produce from the farm. The money you pay helps the farm cover expenses. The double bonus for the Growing Home’s CSA program is that they aren’t just a farm, they provide job training and assistance to homeless and low-income men and women in Chicago. So you help the farm, you help some people and you get to eat food grown on a farm in Chicago. I’d heard about the Urban Farm before but I didn’t know much about it.

The grocery experiment went well. Overall the total for the week was a couple dollars under our normal budget. I think it was $2. Not bad though. I thought for sure it would be more expensive to shop like this. I did go to Jewel once, but got out of there for under $30 which is unbelievable. The thing that gets me at the bigger stores is all the stuff on ‘sale’. I go with a list and a good idea of what we need for the week but get sidetracked and end up buying a couple extra this and one more of that because it’s a good deal. I try really really hard not to be a sucker for these marketing strategies but inevitably get roped in. The other major problem with shopping at the supermarkets is buying more than we can actually eat in a reasonable amount of time, especially produce. So at the end of the week before we’d get ready to do the next big shopping I’d end up throwing things out that have gone bad.

The grocery experiment will continue and I’m going to find some other ways to reduce some waste and be a bit more frugal.

One thing I did do last week is buy some nylon reusable shopping bags. I have some big tote bags that I always forget to bring with me. These are handy and I have them in my purse so I have no excuse. Normally by then end of the week our plastic bag drawer is hitting capacity but we only acquired 4 bags this week.

I also managed to actually get out and be somewhat social this past week too. Thursday I went to Huttenbar in Lincoln Square. Cool place, horrible music! Some people who really loved Carrie Underwood commandeered the juke box and tortured us. Once they left it didn’t get much better but after a few pints Elton John and the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack aren’t so bad.

Friday went to lunch at Lula. It wasn’t the best this time but I don’t think I was actually in the mood for that food. I really wanted something greasy, Lula is not the place to go when you have a craving for unhealthy things.

Saturday I ran around most of the day shopping, buying dog food general errands. Drove past a condo that looked interesting but it didn’t have any outdoor space so the hunt kind of continues.

Sunday Adam had a show. It was great! We stayed out way too late ate a pizza at 2 in the morning and had a lazy Monday.

And now it’s Tuesday. I’m starting a new project this week which I need to get working on..